Carter Hall was full of second hand clothes Monday and Tuesday during the Clothing Swap event held by the students of the social work program at USI. Their first try at this during the fall semester ended up a success so they decided to do it again for the spring semester as well.
The purpose of the clothing swap is to help encourage students to donate clothing items and accessories that they may no longer need, this way other students who may need it more or looking to not break the bank when it comes to a new wardrobe can easily find items new to them, second hand.
Liddy Addis, junior social work major, thought that last semester’s clothes swap was a big success with tables being full and student attendance being high. A few reasons as to why this event was important came to their mind.
“It’s a multi-fold of reasons why we’re doing this. One is fast fashion has become such a problem in our world today, [it] has a lot of consequences to the economy and environmental issues and whatnot. Doing something like this clothing swap helps us not go through fast fashion as much. It helps us be able to trade things out and whatnot,” they said, “And then another reason is, like a lot of college students, they don’t have a bunch of money to spend on clothes and whatnot. So even if they may need them, they may not be able to get them.”
They go on to explain their ticket system and how it works for both students who donate and students who need a hand.
“People will bring in items of clothing and we have a ticket system this semester. It’s a little bit different than we did it last semester, but I think it’s working really well, where basically we have different colors of tickets and the different colors equals a different amount of items. So we have, like pink [tickets] that equals 20 items or whatever. Like, one item, five items, 10 items and 20 items.”
They said earlier, “We actually have an option for people to donate tickets and for students, or even people from the community, are able to come in. Even if they don’t have items to donate, they can get the donated tickets and still shop even if they didn’t have anything to donate.”
For any excess amount of clothes not taken by students or the community, it all gets donated elsewhere. Liddy said that homeless and domestic abuse shelters or different organizations. Last semester the group donated a lot of the clothes towards the Rainbow Jacket Project. So not only have the social work students decided to help the campus and hyperlocal area, they’ve decided to help the city of Evansville and anyone in need of some garments.
“I would hope that it can continue on every semester. It seems like everyone is really enjoying it. It also gives everyone a great excuse to clean out their closet and get rid of anything that they don’t use anymore.” They said, “And then all those things that aren’t being used can get a new life in other people’s homes in wardrobes and whatnot. So yeah, I think it’s a great time to just help each other and the community.”
